Spring is REALLY finally here... I hope

Last week we sung a Franciscan hymn that starts off:

(1)

Francis has made us see

How music fills the skies;

A glorious psalmody

Which cannot fail to rise

As God is praised by all mankind,

By water, sun, moon, stars and wind.

When I woke up this morning and saw the tree blossoming outside my window I just had to go and take some pictures.

(2)

Most High, Almighty Lord, 

Blessing and praise are thine.

All honour we afford

To thee, whose great design

Has given us, unworthy, claim

To sing the glory of thy name.

(3)

'Go sell all that thou hast'

Did not the Master say?

The rich young man at last

Learns not to turn away,

But giving all, finds in its place

The wealth of poverty's embrace.

 

(4)

'My church is falling - Look!'

The crucified had said;

Yet more than stones it took

To raise her from the dead.

In him her ransom's signs appear,

Those saving wounds of nail and spear.

 

(5)

O God thou Father art,

And Son and Holy Ghost:

Imprint upon our heart

Those wounds through which thou dost

Afford us here, for life above,

Humility and joy and love.  

The Dark Night: Clinging to the Cross

Well, I ended the last post on the theme of trusting.  And I think that's always a topic on which more can be said.

One of my favourite paintings is Liberatore's Christ on the Cross.  It hung for a while at the National Gallery.  It now hangs above my bed, or rather a cheap reproduction poster does (sad face).  It shows scenes of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, and in the centre is a breathtaking Crucifixion scene.  One character is rather out of place. See if you can spot who!

St Francis (who was quite definitely not there at the time) is hanging on to the bottom of the cross.  There's a wonderful hymn that has the chorus, "So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, Till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, And exchange it some day for a crown."  Liberatore included St Francis, not only because the painting had been commissioned by patrons with a particular devotion, but also because we are all called to cling to the cross in our daily lives, but especially at times when trusting God seems hard.

It sounds a ridiculous thing but I sometimes hold onto the cross in our cemetery.   It is just too large to hug, but perfect for hanging off and praying.  Sometimes I pray that I could take that cross with me, so that I could always remember why it is that I am trusting in God.  He loves me as He loves each one of us.  And that is the end of the matter.

Part of learning to trust is learning to return that love, not just loving God when He seems to be 'all over me.'  Here's a short poem I wrote after praying in the cemetery.

Old Rugged Cross

His weight holds my being

As we stand side by side,

My arm around His trunk.

As I look beyond

The tips of my fingers work

To hold Him closer, to prevent

His flight, rejoicing

To know that part of Him.

I touch, and to touch

Resolves the view

That was beyond my apprehension.

I turn my neck, and to turn

I leave the view as it is.

The last of my lips seeks Him out

Beyond the touch.

19^th February 2013

Sitting in the kitchen in Douglas instead of Compline

after an evening watching the sun set listening to music

 and praying in the cemetery

The Dark Night Bears Fruit

We hear so much about how faith 'heals,' how it 'makes us strong' and takes away all our 'weakness.'  But a great part of the Christian life is in fact a painful yearning for God, who is with us if we would only see him.  "Upon my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves;  I sought him, but I found him not;  I called him, but he gave no answer" (Song of Songs 3:1).

I want to compare some poems that I wrote a month or so apart during this period of seeming spiritual dryness.  None of them are much to speak about from a literature point of view, but they were my measly attempts to put my feelings into words, and I hope they show some sort of progression.  The first really expresses a lot of the feelings in my last post.

Being Before the Sacrament

A Witness

The cross on my neck has no meaning

It does not move or speak to me

Though I am waiting.

I hold it through force of habit

And feel nothing.

The mat underneath my face

Scratches.  I don’t care.

I worm my cheek into the rough,

Eyes down.

Cold seeps up my back, my feet.

This gets to me,

Not because it speaks to me on any particular plane

But because it has always annoyed me,

And it is irritation, rather than resolution,

That gets me off the mat.

Friday 8^th March 2013

Douglas kitchen after a difficult day

I have an icon of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-9) above the desk where I say morning prayer.  Icons are written to draw you in, to compel you to prayer and an acknowledgment of the divine simply by being in their presence.  This happened this morning, and I just had to write some of the thoughts that crystallised down.

17:1-9

 

He leads up the mountain.

They follow: “Teacher.”

Life seems hard, but simple.

The know no other.

The top of the mountain.

They know, they see: “Christ.”

They are thrown down.

Why me?  This terrible gift?

Life was so much

Simpler.  Ignorance was

Bliss.

How much harder is reality?

Monday 15^th March 2013

One of the things that we don't often acknowledge as Christians is the fact that to a certain extent, ignorance is bliss.  If you are looking for easy answers and an easy life planned out for you, then Christ is not the one you are seeking.  

The prophet Isaiah wrote, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways... for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).  This man who had such an intense relationship with God had to acknowledge that he could never understand his Lord.  

Jesus said, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).  I have grown up in a society in which personal autonomy, the absolute right to life choices and the absolute desire to be in full control as we make them is the norm.  We tell ourselves that if we are in control then we will be happy.  We have the power to take hold of our own lives and do what we want with ourselves.

Perhaps therefore, denying myself and taking up my cross means acknowledging - I mean REALLY acknowledging - that accepting the reality that Christ is in the world, that God is working in me and around me, and that I can never hope to understand His ways or His thoughts, means giving up that desire to control my relationship with Him.

"I sought him, but I found him not."  I'm not going to stop seeking Him, but I am going to try to trust a bit more that He is hurting just as much as I am through my not finding Him, and that His plans for me are good, even if it doesn't always feel like it.

"I am the good shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.  And I lay down my life for the sheep."  John 10:14-15

Hilfield: The Dark Night Rises

I haven't posted for a month.  It has been a hard month.  I don't think you need to completely understand things to write about them, but you do need to have at least some perspective and purchase on them, and up till now I don't think I have.

For quite a while I have felt as though I have been going through some sort of divorce from Hilfield.  Anyone who has moved on from a school, or job, or club, or sports team will probably recognise what I am about to describe:  a feeling of loneliness, of being outside and rejected; of being undervalued and then feeling that one has little value in oneself; then a sense of disillusionment, frustration and anger at individuals who seem either not to feel those things themselves or trigger those feelings in me.

Yup, it's been a long month, realising that I have been feeling those things for quite a while.

I think these things would all be quite beareable in themselves, for they are just a normal part of living and working with other people.  You either work out a way to live with them, or deal with them with those concerned.  But I can't deal with this in that way.  I need to go to the source.  And that is far more painful and disorientating than any of those quite basic emotions I described above.

The simple truth is that I can't feel God, because I don't feel I am being honest to Him in my life here.


That may seem quite a shocking thing for someone who is preparing to spend a lifetime in God's service to say, but that is the fact of the matter.  The more time I spend here, the more my prayers seem just to vanish into the ether, the more life with others seems to lose its sacramental quality, the more my living with myself seems to become without hope or purpose.

 

Caravaggio: The Denial of Peter (John 18:13-27)

How at peace does Peter look as he denies Jesus?

My logical response is to say, "Well, evidently this place isn't good for me.  I don't feel spiritually or socially well here and so I should go back to the places which feel more wholesome for me."  And there is a lot in that way of thinking.  But the problem with it comes in those last two words, "for me."

When I came to Hilfield, I very definitively came "for me," if not just to feel good about myself, at least to learn and pray, to seep myself in the things "I feel" that "I need" for "my life" with God.  Perhaps God is forcing me to question that.  He certainly isn't just giving me those things!

I find rhetoric about "the community" very difficult to swallow.  Perhaps it is because I am young and I naturally have more of a "me and the world" mindset, but I just can't inhabit the idea that I am here solely to serve and be served by "the community."  A part of me feels this is because I want to protect my developing sense of self, in which I am really rejoicing for the first time, from the great institutional ogre that seems to muscle in on it every day.  But actually I find it just as hard to think of my life here in terms of serving and being served by "the people I live with", rather than "the community," however much I love them.

There is a great temptation, to which I fall prey almost daily, to beat myself up for not being able to "get" community life in this sense.  "Why don't I get it when they do?"  "Am I stupid?"  "Am I bad?"  But I think that this temptation is so particularly alluring because it allows me to avoid the really difficult question: "What is God actually doing here in me?"

If I find it so unsatisfying to be here for "my" self, or be here for "my" community, or even be here for "my" friends, maybe it is about time I started asking why I am here for God, whom I can never call "mine."

Congdon: Ego Sum: Matt 14:24-27

'Take heart.  It is I.  Do not be afraid.'

Some Introductory Reading on the Issues in This Post:

On the meaning and purpose of that sense that God is not there: The Dark Night of the Soul - St John of the Cross

On the value of staying in a place or amongst a group of people: Abiding - Ben Quash

On what it means to be true to God's call: The Cost Of Discipleship - Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Chs.2-3

On responding to the love of God: In My Disc of Gold - William Congdon

On community and the purpose of religious community - Cave, Refectory, Road -  Ian Adams